“It’s a simple statement to place on a technology product — alongside the obligatory ‘Assembled in China’ — but it speaks volumes about the emphasis Apple places on the work of Mr. Ive, the company’s shy, unassuming and relatively unknown senior vice-president of industrial design,” Hartley reports. “While the Apple spotlight is focused on the computer titan’s bombastic chief executive, Steve Jobs, among the hordes of Macfaithful, Mr. Ive is often hailed as the design genius who helped fuel Apple’s turnaround from also-ran computer maker to the king of high-end electronics.”
MacDailyNews Take: “Also-ran?!” Also-rans do not dictate the direction of the market for well over 30 years. An example of an also-ran computer maker would be Compaq. Or Gateway. Also-rans, by definition, do not lead; they follow at a great distance. If Hartley is referring to units shipped (market share), okay, fine, but that’s the only measure that would work – not revenue share and certainly not mind share. By any objective measure, the PC industry’s leader for over three decades has clearly been Apple. Hartley would have done better to use the dreaded “niche” in that spot instead.
Hartley continues, “The 43-year-old Briton is responsible for leading the design team that created many of the Cupertino, Calif.-based company’s signature, culture-shifting products, including the colourful iMac, the iPod music player, the iPhone and now the iPad tablet computer… His work has become the focus of design-school case studies, while his creations, including the original iPod, have joined the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the Centre Pompidou in Paris.”
“Although Mr. Jobs receives the lion’s share of the credit for Apple’s rise from the doldrums to a company with a US$215-billion market capitalization today, Mr. Ive is seen by many analysts as the man who helped turn many of the Apple founder’s ideas into products,” Hartley reports. “There are even whispers that Mr. Ive is on the short list to replace Mr. Jobs as chief executive when the Apple founder eventually steps down.”
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: “Jonathan Ive, Apple Computer CEO circa 2025. It has a pretty nice ring to it, doesn’t it? You heard it here first. I think Mr. Ive could pull it off. And I think Jobs thinks so, too…” – SteveJack, MacDailyNews, August 20, 2003
Hownabout Scott Forstal. iPhone os designer vp or whatever. He’s not a suit is already working in the area apple has taken over (mobile tech) and plans to continue to rule. Has the vision as job. And is still younger than any of the guys you are talking about.
Then again there is Gray Powell who is a marketing genius too
@C1
“It takes a certain amount of arrogance to know you’re right and not listen to doubters.”
Sounds like how some people thought of Bush, and how some people think of Obama. Just sayin….time for my nightcap….what will I choose….
Agreed that Tim Cook is a formidable player on the Apple team. Behind the scenes he helps manage the global reach of Apple’s production involving hundreds of suppliers from dozens of countries and makes this huge complex process look smooth and easy. He is likely the best at what he does of any exec in the world.
I think the article is foolish.
Ive is a good designer, but he’s not great. Much of his design inspiration comes from 60s minimalist Dieter Rams of Braun, and Ive admits this openly, to his credit. The interesting thing is that while Rams credits Apple for keeping the values of good design alive and healthy, he doesn’t specifically recognise Ive as being thr cause of this. But to posit Ive as a future CEO of Apple is just silly. He would crumble in a week. He’s a designer, who got lucky and found a job at Apple at the right time. Liking someone and wanting them to do well does not mean they have what it takes to be CEO.
The article is also foolish because inscribing the words ‘Designed by Apple in California’ is not putting Ive’s signature on every product. That’s the most stupid thing i’ve heard in a long time. Putting those words on there is a position statement to state that while the device may have been built in China, it was conceived, designed, prototyped etc in America. That really just says that all the IP in a product is Apple’s and is American. It has nothing to do with Ive and only a naive fool would think so.
Ive did not invent any new products. He provides cool clothes for the real designers at Apple, who are the engineers who take an idea, design a circuit, make prototypes, test and refine its workings etc. Then when the engineering is nearly done, it’s given to Ive to dress it up. Did anyone really believe otherwise?
When the first 128K Mac was made, Jobs had the signatures of every key contributor to that project moulded into the inside of the back cover.
Look inside any Apple product and you won’t find any names inscribed or even printed anywhere.
Ive is no future CEO. He would fold in a week. Steve Jobs has the best design eyes at Apple. If you doubt me, take a look at the Apple II. Still a rakish looking computer and, in engineering design terms, it’s still the ancestor of today’s Mac Pro and every desktop PC. Design is not just about the way a thing looks. Open the bonnet (hood) of any Audi or Mercedes and tell me why they bother to make the engine compartment look good. Printed circuit boards are ‘designed’ too. They just work. Ive has zero involvement with that. Software, like OSX is ‘designed’ too. It simply works and is tweaked for each device. Ive has no hand in that.
Designed by ‘Apple’ in California. Not Designed by Ive in California. Eeesh. All these guys etting all girly about Ive, when it is ultimately Steve Jobs that decides. He has said that thousands f ideas are rejected and Apple only ships the ones that survive tht rigorous selection process. If Ive was Mr. ‘Designed in California’ that sounds like a lot of bad ideas being canned. And hey most of us could produce a great design or three, if we could try a thousand ideas out in the process.
Ive is no bullshitter. He’s not a great designer. He takes design themes that he likes and makes them in the Apple mould. That is all. Take a look at Rams’ design portfolio and you’ll see where Ive’s inspirations come from. He says so himself.
Designed by many hands and minds at Apple.
Approved by Steve Jobs.
——————————————————————
There’s no one there with CEO instincts except Cook, and I think he has learned most of the business aspects running Apple. He’s ready if needed. He can lead a team of people with their own winning talents like Ive, Forstall, the engineering guy and silly Phil. He is the production guy.
As for Guy K. Honestly C1, he talks far better than he ever walked. He must have some Irish in him cos he sure has kissed the Blarney Stone. He’s THE ultimate car salesman. Articulate, but not a creator. Definitely no CEO.
Let’s get real, please.
Well, there is are sub-catagories of Industrial Design (ID). Like transportation, furniture, toy, robot, product. I went to Pratt Institute in New York. It is the best in America, seriously.
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chano: “I think the article is foolish…”
Agreed, but you go too far in trying to make your point with Ive. Dieter Rams minimalism may *appear* simple, but elegantly minimalist design is anything but easy. Just look at the wasteland of other computer products out there–and consider how Apple products stand above the rest design-wise–to see how difficult good minimalism really is. Jony Ive said it best when he noted that Apple was most proud of what they *didn’t* include in the iPad, in spite of the rancor they knew would come out from the bottle-glassed geek crowd about the device not having a Webcam, USB ports, SD slot, dingle balls, and other doohickies. And to not give Ive credit just because he openly gives tribute to Dieter Rams is silly–all great thinkers openly lean on their predecessors (“I stand on the shoulders of giants…”).
I thought this passage in an article about Dieter Rams and Braun almost eerily describes the secret of Apple, too:
“…Braun’s unique culture, in which designers, technicians and industrialists worked hand in hand to produce extraordinary products. Everything was done in-house: Rams oversaw graphic and packaging design, advertising and even the design of Braun’s buildings and interiors. “I didn’t design everything by myself,” he says. “I had 24 people in the design team, including model makers and the secretarial department and the graphic design department. It was never so that I gave ideas to my colleagues; we worked together. That’s how we influenced all the other departments; influenced how the engineers worked, how the sales people worked. But I was involved in everything and responsible for everything. I personally designed most of the things for the hi-fi range.”
@chano
Couldn’t agree more, +10.
Except for one small part at the end, I have survived Guy Kawasaki’s columns, and for the most part, they were not insightful nor useful. He served his purpose of being Mac Advocate at the time when there weren’t MDN or Gruber, Dilger et al. But to suggest that he was eloquent in his prose would be taking it to the same extreme as these loons are trying with young Mr. Ive.
Whole Jobs does get the kudos he always gives credit to Ives with each product (new) intro.
@ Big Al:
I meant Steve has the patience to make sure a product/feature is right before launching it. You can’t argue with that. Look how long some of the iPhone features took to be released… Or the iPhone/iPad devices in general.